Understanding Same-Sex Attraction [VIDEO]

The video below makes the claim that human sexuality is more fluid than many believe. It’s a controversial point since it challenges the thesis that homosexual desire is a fixed component of individual identity, what in theological terms represents a profound shift in anthropology, and in sociological terms is known as ‘gay self-identified.’

It is important to remember that at any one term only about 1.4% of the population is considered homosexual. Of that number, 37% of the number eventually leave the life-style. (Source: CDC). Ask most people today and many will say they believe the numbers are much higher, a perception created no doubt by the success of the Gay INC. public relations machine.

From an introduction to the video:

This documentary is an eye-opening experience for many as it presents clear evidence showing that no one is “born gay” and that many people with unwanted same-sex attraction have been able to change. We summarize the research data, include interviews with top experts in the field, and present powerful testimonials from four men who speak honestly, openly and compellingly about what it was like for them to develop same-sex attraction and live the homosexual lifestyle. They then discuss their experiences with therapy that helped them to develop a healthy heterosexual sexual orientation.

In conjunction with the release of this video, we are also releasing our extensive new policy brief, Laws Banning Sexual Orientation Change Therapy are Harmful and Violate Fundamental Human Rights. http://www.familywatchinternational.o…

Our new documentary and policy brief together are very timely. More and more people are confused because of misinformation regarding homosexuality, and they believe the “born that way” (and can’t change) myth. Increasingly, the rights of those who seek change therapy (also known as sexual orientation change therapy or SOCE) are violated, as laws are being enacted to ban it.

Comments

This film is the perpetration of charlatans and fabricators of science from the first two minutes of its opening. It promotes known falsehoods as medical science – and for as much as I am openly and aggressively a critic of the American Psychiatric and American Psychological Associations – ascribes false opinions and policy (notably that the American Psychological Association has “long held that homosexuality is biologically determined”) to professional healthcare organizations with the express intent of demonizing them. The “credentials” of these individuals are from self-published materials which they refuse to subject to the scientific community to be scrutinized for study design, data integrity, and analysis accuracy.

I have mentioned many times that the “h-index” – how often your research is quoted in further research by your peers – has been established within the scientific community as a means of determining durable academic performance and above-average imapact (It has been calculated that 84% of Nobel prize winners had an h-index of at least 30 & newly elected members in the National Academy of Sciences in Physics and Astronomy in 2005 had a median h-index of 46). Google Scholar is now an acknowledged academic source for searching h-indexes for scholars and citations. Go back, collect names, and search Google Scholar for h-inex scores: Joseph Nicolosi, A. Dean Byrd (author of hundreds of articles & books), Julie Harren Hamilton, Floyd Godfrey, Jeffrey Satinover (once you remove citations for “decoding the Bible), and Benjamin Kaufman are all “zero.” Nicholas A. Cummings, past president of the APA, has 500 academic citations, but he did not research homosexuality; the information he offers is purely anecdotal and his own opinion. Likewise, Stanton L. Jones has hundreds of legitimate academic citations regarding a “Christian-focused” practice of clinical psychology, as well as the treatment of alcoholism, as well as the single study he promotes in this film. I would note that the initial study group consisted of 98 subjects (72 men & 26 women) which had “eroded to 73 subjects” at year three, and “63 subjects at year 7 for a retention rate of 64%.” They finished with 14 “conversions,” 18 in “chastity,” 16 “stable” truly gay, and 3 “failure” confused. I strikes me that “definitive,” when one considers 63 research subjects – albeit one “conversion” disputes an illegitimate point the APA never asserted – is a bit over-reaching.

I do not understand your point in posting this trash in place of even speculative, but legitimate research from respected researchers. This does nothing but confuse already confused individuals with information that I could refute with contemporaneous citations that would fill this page. The point is, better we simply say we do not have factual data as to what definitively “causes” homosexuality in our fallen, defiant, and unrepentant human nature within the context of this broken world, and call out to those lost in this world who struggle with this affliction: we are your answer. The Church is the path of repentance, reconciliation, of healing, of chastity & purity, of saving obedience, and the fullness of the Christian life. And you are not alone, because we are all called to the same path. Why you feel the need to continuously clutter this path is beyond me, Fr. Hans.

Mr Stankovich: I’m assuming that the reason this video was posted was to underscore the theological beliefs of the poster and the role that sin plays in the life of the believer. Orthodoxy seems to assert that sin — all sin — is sort of like a cancerous growth on the body. It’s not its “natural” condition: it’s more of an appendage that one can and must lop off (presumably through a life of asceticism and prayer). You may have a scar when it’s gone, but the tumor can mostly be eradicated.

I don’t think this is the universal position amongst Christians. Rather, some acknowledge that this “sinful nature” can exist deeply embedded within the soul until the point of death, although the Christian can simply gain some mastery over it. The war against the flesh will continue until we are purified in the next world.

I don’t take issue with psychologists assisting anyone in being able to live a life that harmonizes with their core values, even if this means a life of celibacy. We are not animals, after all, and we should ideally be guided by reason.

My issue is more with what I think are the false conclusions of some of the men in this video (which seems to be that a homosexual orientation can ONLY be lived out in a harmful and dysfunctional manner and that the only solution is to change the orientation altogether).

Michael Stankovich, physics and astronomy are comparable to the hotly contested and politicized “social sciences”? Really?

James Bradshaw, the physical harm homosexuals incur is endemic to the lifestyle. One example from the CDC:

Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) have been increasing among gay and bisexual men, with recent increases in syphilis being documented across the country. In 2012, men who have sex with men (MSM) accounted for 75% of primary and secondary syphilis cases in the United States. MSM often are diagnosed with other STDs, including chlamydia and gonorrhea infections.

HPV (Human Papillomavirus), the most common STD in the United States, is also a concern for MSM. Some types of HPV can cause genital and anal warts and some can lead to the development of anal and oral cancer. Men who have sex with men are 17 times more likely to develop anal cancer than heterosexual men. Men who are HIV-positive are even more likely than those who are uninfected to develop anal cancer.

Further, the idea that homosexual men will moderate their promiscuity with the continued acceptance of homosexuality in the dominant culture has yet to materialize. From HIV Plus magazine (gay friendly):

The fact is, however, studies still show that men who have sex with men have significantly higher probabilities of getting infected with HIV: and the monogamy message is failing. The Office Of National AIDS Policy’s Greg Millett reported at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Creating Change conference in 2013 that 68 percent of new infections among gay and bi men were happening in the context of primary sexual relationships. A newly released study has found that this may be happening because of a confluence of issues: higher infection rates to begin with, sexual social networks, quantity of sex, lack of testing and access to care, and a higher infectiousness in early infection. There is even some evidence that HIV (Subtype B) prevalent in the U.S. is specifically targeting cells in the anus, making a possible heterosexual epidemic in this country unlikely.

Fr Jacobse, the tendency towards promiscuity is endemic towards the male gender in general. One only needs to look at the prevalence of male heterosexual pornography and strip clubs to see this. I don’t think gender is fluid: the biological, spiritual and psychological differences are real. Women simply aren’t wired towards promiscuity, generally (unless there was some incidence of abuse in their childhood).

I don’t question that sexual orientation is fluid for some. I have met some men who have attractions to both genders in varying degrees, and I doubt anyone would deny this reality. This is not true for all, though, and some men will fall towards one end of the spectrum more than the other. There are some men who will simply never “become straight”, no matter what the treatment.

Male promiscuity is only part of the problem. If 1.7% of the population is responsible for 75% of primary and secondary syphilis cases in the United States (2012) homosexual promiscuity spills over into public health, even creating a crisis.

I think we agree in terms of what the problems are. I just don’t buy into the notion that heterosexuality is a solution. Heterosexuality guarantees nothing. Abortion, divorce and the abandonment and abuse of children is an epidemic amongst heterosexuals. Go onto any adoption site and see how many children have been rejected by their own parents. It’s heartbreaking.

I’m a realist, and you seem to be as well. I think people are more likely to respond if you encourage them to love better instead of trying to tell them love someone else for purely rational or pragmatic reasons or because the gender of the object of their affection is “incorrect”.

Monogamous heterosexual marriage and the preservation of family is the answer. The culture is in moral free fall out of which the notion that homosexual couplings can replicate the family emerges. Gay INC is fundamentally a dishonest enterprise, but not all homosexuals buy into it.

Fail in what sense? If you mean according to a narrow religious definition (man + woman = success), then of course, it’s doomed from the start. I don’t think that’s what you mean, though. We probably agree that success involves commitment as well as a willingness to let go of a slavish devotion to one’s own needs and wants for the better of one’s spouse/partner and one’s children.

It is true, many gay relationships will not last forever. Some will, though. Some will adopt or raise children of their own through IVF or surrogacy, and these children will sometimes do well, sometimes not (just as is the case with heterosexual couples). Some of these children will even fare better than those raised by parents of opposing genders.

That being said, I concede that there does need to be a “great awakening” amongst the gay community, just as there needs to be one amongst the African-American community which has an unfortunately higher rate of crime and single parenthood. To this cause, I think the orthodox religious community has much to offer. It’s certainly not going to come from a liberal political mindset which thinks that the answers to all of life’s difficulties can be found in more “funding”.

Homosexual marriage is a social experiment that belies history and tradition. It’s the culmination of a deep confusion about man and nature that finds is most penetrating and illuminating intellectual expression in Orthodox theology and is actualized in and through the Church (rightly understood and practiced). Since you consider that a “narrow religious definition” only nature remains but nature is an exacting taskmaster. You can only defy it for only so long.

Western Christian culture is in moral collapse. The cultural structures necessary for a stable civilization are crumbling. Sexuality is inextricably tied to creativity (of which the possibility of procreation is one expression) but male to male relations existentially deny that possibility. Homosexual families are necessarily artificial contrivances that in the end will exact a toll on the children brought up in them. This development merely represents a step farther down the road of the collapse of the family and society in the end.

Philosophically, homosexual parings violates the natural complementarity of male and female, the biological binaries as we used to call them but presently is also under attack. The term “gender” is conflated into “sex” and any sense of nature — the natural — is discarded. Again, in theological terms this represents a radical shift in the anthropology that guided Western culture for two millennia but since this too references a “narrow religious definition” let’s call on nature again: the plumbing does not fit; the anal canal is not a sexual organ. Pretending it does will exact a penalty no matter how strenuously we deny it as the sexual disease rates of active homosexuals makes clear. Again, nature is a demanding taskmaster.

Homosexuality then, at least the elevation of homosexual couplings to moral parity with heterosexual unions (marriage and family being preferred) is in fact an elevation of nihilism, the celebration of sterility, the denial that human creativity draws from and points to something greater than the object of one’s sexual desire. The very act of homosexual “intercourse” where the progenitive seed is deposited in the waste canal of a same-sex partner reveals the nihilistic core of this ideological project. Adopting children cannot negate this. Nature too is a teacher.

Put in theological terms then, all desire must, if man is to understand where his authenticity as man is grounded, be sublimated into the desire for God. Put another way, when God is forgotten all is permitted.

I’m a realist, and you seem to be as well. I think people are more likely to respond if you encourage them to love better instead of trying to tell them love someone else for purely rational or pragmatic reasons or because the gender of the object of their affection is “incorrect”.

That is not a Realist definition of love (or Love). A Realist would never affirm the ontology of man (anthropology) found in the Church as something purely “rational” or “pragmatic” – that is a Nominalist definition of man. A Realist would never separate the ontology of objects from the relationship between the objects, defining Love down to the purely “relational” – a Nominalist would however.

The “harm” that’s going to come to them is far worse than any deadly disease. The harm is that they will go through life never finding what their hearts yearn for: the fulfilling comfort and consolation, as well as the completion, of being authentically loved by another human being because they are seeking it from those who do not have it to give.

The harm is that they may very well end their lives in despair, never realizing that the only Man who can heal their brokenness, Christ-God, was right in front of them all along, lovingly waiting for them to give up their endless, futile quest (promiscuity) and turn to Him. The harm that will come to them will be that the very wicked people who are using them will throw them under the bus when they are no longer needed.

The harm that will come to priests and bishops who, weak in faith, do not tell them that Jesus our God is truly He whom their hearts seek, and believe that they can alleviate this loneliness by re-writing the Laws of God, will be a mill stone around their necks.

The men in this video all seemed to blame their unhappiness and misery not on their own behavior and how they lived their lives but on the sexual orientation itself. So predictably, they think that changing the orientation itself will alleviate their problems.

Whatever. To each his own.

A couple things are worth noting, however:
1) These could be men who are/were bisexual and for whom a capacity for sexual interest in women was never outside the realm of possibility
2) This is a study of a relatively short duration. We should come back to these men in a few years and see if their stories are the same and if they are/were being honest.

Remember John Paulk, the famous “ex gay” who was on the cover of Newsweek?

Well, here’s what he has to say now:

“For the better part of ten years, I was an advocate and spokesman for what’s known as the “ex-gay movement,” where we declared that sexual orientation could be changed through a close-knit relationship with God, intensive therapy and strong determination. At the time, I truly believed that it would happen. And while many things in my life did change as a Christian, my sexual orientation did not”

John is now not the highly dysfunctional mess that groups such as the one on the video would like to portray him to be but a successful businessman who owns his own catering company.

I’m the poster and the reason I posted it was to show that the idea that homosexual orientation is immutable is clearly false. 1.7% of the total population practices homosexuality at any one time, and out of that number 37% eventually abandon the lifestyle (Source: CDC) . Sexual orientation is much more fluid than we are led to believe.

As for John Paulk, what bearing does he have on the discussion, except perhaps as the poster boy of those opposed to the idea that homosexual orientation is not immutable?

Please provide legitimate, reliable, contemporary scientific sources that suggest that homosexual orientation is immutable. Apart from anecdotal suggestion, you cannot because it does not exist. Whatever you have been “led to believe,” it has been by the manipulation of charlatans alone.

Likewise, you have provided the word of these charlatans and self-serving creeps with no academic standing that homosexual orientation is fluid. The best available data suggests – as I have noted so many times on this very site – that adolescents who struggle with the issue of sexual orientation will resolve as heterosexual 95% of the time; and that homosexual orientation in the remainder is, in fact, non-phasic, non-fluid, and stable across the lifespan. The fact of the matter, however, is that, without the ability to conduct research, we have no means of determining the immutability of sexual orientation. NARTH & Exodus knowingly defy the current ethical ban on human-subject research without a demonstration of risk-to-benefit ratio prediction, and make false statements as to their “success” and ability to “re-orient” homosexual individuals without any demonstration of research design, data as to subject selection, research data, data analysis, and research outcome analysis. Their “success” claims are outrageous and unimaginable, and they refuse raw data access to legitimate researchers in the field.

I repeat myself that you have been “mislead” by charlatans on both sides of a spurious argument, such that “liberal, compromised scientists” hold that homosexual orientation is “immutable” (they do not), and that homosexual orientation is more “fluid” than we were led to believe (the available data does not support such a claim, and the ban on research prevents us from pursuing the matter).

Your argument reminds me of the debate several decades back about capital punishment and crime rates. The debate went back and forth until people realized that some human behavior is too complex to neatly fit into empirical categories (the sobriquet social science notwithstanding).

It’s clear you don’t approve of NARTH. What you don’t provide is any explanation why 37% of the 1.7% of the population practicing homosexuality at any one time eventually leave the lifestyle. You won’t be able to of course but only because these questions lie outside of the purview of social science.

We know that the speculations of social scientists have reached their limits when their research is driven by ideology and their professional guilds become political action committees. That’s what we see with the APA (which you affirmed above). That’s also when language like “creep” and “charlatan” is expected to be taken seriously.

Again we are back to your “sandbox” where you may suspend reality as you wish. I have been a strident, patient, and consistent instructor for over three years on this site, delivering the current undeniable biogenetic, epigenetic, endocrinological, and psychiatric influences on some individuals with same-sex attraction, and the continuously emerging contemporaneous data as it occurs. As you cannot claim ignorance, your insistence on dismissing my arguments as “social science” are silliness and manipulation. You cannot dismiss replicable biological data as “driven by ideology… professional guilds [nor] political action committees.” By aligning yourself with charlatans, you have painted yourself into a corner: the biological data exists. Neither you nor NARTH can deny it exists, and your only option is to attempt to “discredit” legitimate researchers from major universities.

You say I “don’t approve of NARTH.” What I resent is their manipulation of the integrity of the legitimate scientific system by which we often determine life-saving and life-enhancing therapies and treatment. They knowingly & purposely subvert the system with deception and lies, “mirroring” the system of integrity as a means to their own prideful end. They hate homosexuals and homosexual individuals; play upon their guilt & shame; disregard any notion of the safety of human subjects, and apply “treatment” that is untested and unproven as to its effectiveness or harm; and lie as to their “rate of success.” How you are able to align yourself with these people – ideologically or otherwise – or object to me referring to them as charlatans and creeps is beyond me.

Finally, it would never cross my mind to enter into a discussion – say, for example, in chemical engineering – at the technical level of expertise at which you enter this discussion, without a thorough appreciation and understanding of the base literature of the field. You have been quoting this dated study from the CDC and Michael Medved for years now, and I have provided you with more current data that is accepted by the field in general on this very site on several occasions. Exactly when do you believe you have “reached your limits” and are no longer competent to carry on this discussion? In my estimation, you exhausted your limitations several years ago, and the posting of this video brought absolutely no new information to this discussion. I say again, if you want contemporaneous “responses” to Joseph Nicolosi, A. Dean Byrd, Julie Harren Hamilton, Floyd Godfrey, Jeffrey Satinover, Benjamin Kaufman, Nicholas A. Cummings, and Stanton L. Jones, provide me the forum as you did for all the writers you have featured whom you support, and I am happy to oblige.

Your conclusion that anyone who argues that homosexual desire in not immutable is met with this:

They hate homosexuals and homosexual individuals; play upon their guilt & shame; disregard any notion of the safety of human subjects, and apply “treatment” that is untested and unproven as to its effectiveness or harm; and lie as to their “rate of success.”

You would make this out to be a personal “bias” or “prejudice” of mine because you are unqualified to speak to such matters. You might make an honest and credible attempt of going to Google – Imagine! – and addressing the issues of their demonstrated academic deceit; their refusal to provide details of their research design; their process criteria to select voluntary subjects; determinations of harm-to-benefit ratios with human subjects and the publication of their overseeing committee to monitor patient safety; their failure to release raw data and statistical analysis to support their claims of re-orientation “success” at published rates of “30% and greater”; and their failure to release any data as to reports of harmful consequences to their “their” despite the fact that there is an abundance of anecdotal reports from participants. You will find that I have simply enumerated the basics of legitimate clinical research with human subjects, and what NARTH has done is not only distasteful and academically offensive, but unethical. They are self-funded, self-refereed and self-published because they cannot meet the academic criteria to be included in the legitimate, mainstream scientific media. While they might insist they are excluded because of “prejudice,” they are deceivers, and a number of their “scholars” have been dismissed from professional organizations for misrepresenting their data and the otherwise legitimate data of others. By definition, they are charlatans and creeps.

You statement that “Your conclusion that anyone who argues that homosexual desire in not immutable is met with this…” would suggest that I made a statement that “homosexual desire in not immutable.” I have never, ever made such a statement. I personally believe that, without the ability to continue research, we do not possess enough information to definitively reach a conclusive statement for every individual. I would note that my beloved Professor of Dogmatic Theology, SS Verhovskoy, was asked if it were possible for satan to repent: he indicated that “probability and inclination at times is such that it can be said it is so unlikely that it simply cannot happen. Nevertheless, God is our Father, and the Holy Spirit goes where He wishes…” I suggest you do not put words in my mouth that do not belong there.

I always manage to answer your questions directly, while you possess a marvelous ability to skirt the “issues” by focusing on “hot-button” derivatives, a technique that serves you well in this sandbox. I would pay money to get you in a live debate: I would take your wallet, your watch, and your car keys before you knew what hit you…

1.7% of the population engages in homosexual behavior at any one time. Of this number 37% leave the lifestyle — transition to heterosexuality in other words. If people want therapy to help them in the transition let them have it. All this Sturm und Drang is simply not necessary.

Homosexuality has been politicized, especially in the professional guilds of the social sciences. Yet homosexuality constituted as an orientation represents a profound shift in theological anthropology; traditional assumptions about the nature of man are shifting into a deterministic model that will have profound cultural consequences down the road. This is indisputable and it is virtually certain it will occur. The next step is speech codes against the criticism of homosexual behavior (right outside the door), and finally the legal prohibition of any therapies for people who want to move away from homosexuality.

Obviously you don’t agree with this. That much is clear. But your implicit determinism cannot stop with homosexuality alone. Next is pedophilia which, given the current thinking, also qualifies as an orientation. There will be other perversions down the road.

The truth is that passions, when acted upon, effect an orientation. This is not restricted to sexual passions alone. This conclusion however, is becoming increasingly dim as traditional Christian anthropology is overturned. Pounding your fist on the table doesn’t change this fact.

You are the Karl Rove of those orthodox hand-tied to the Christian Right hoping to be accepted and tolerated by them, and you are expert. I do not need to “pound the table.” Your willful association with, and defense of charlatans and deceivers speaks for itself and sets you at the periphery of those who defend Truth in principle, and in practice always. One battles darkness with light (cf. 2 Cor. 6:14), not dimness; and one battles falsehood with truth (cf. Eph. 4:25), not cunning & manipulation. You purposely peddle outdated statistics and unsupportable references to pedophilia – even when I have corrected you – because you love the “game,” the “Sturm und Drang” as it were. I say you do so at your own peril. Human lives, not philosophy, are at stake here.

Both you and the author of an article regarding homosexuality at discussion in another thread purposely confuse the distinction of Orthodox Anthropology “as it was in the beginning” and according to the Creation, and what you term “theological anthropology” that reflects the fallen nature of our humanity in the context of this broken world. Orthodox Anthropology is once and for all time, reflecting the very image and likeness of the Creator, at His very Hand – not subject to the “shifts” of this continuously eroding and ultimately terminal fallen humanity that defies and rejects the Spirit that enlivens – but to be directly seen again in the Kingdom which is to come. While you yourself say that “traditional assumptions about the nature of man are shifting,” [emphasis mine], you act as if societal forces actually posses the power to affect change in the Orthodox Anthropology itself, therefore justifying extraordinary means to stop them; and in the case of NARTH and the Christian Right, this includes the condoning of deceit, manipulation, and outright lying. This is a despicable form of pride that is completely foreign to the Orthodox mind, as it suggests that God Himself is impotent to manage the worst of human sacrilege in this world – and apparently in the world to come – that the end justifies the means.

And in this same vein, I am the one who stands at the line of clinical & legal confrontations and ethical dilemmas regarding LGBT individuals in the medical environment, not you. And you would lecture me from behind your cassock & cross as to the “impending” conflict and societal “crises?” Wake up man! Faced with the loss of licensing and a means of income for refusing to participate in “transgender transitioning therapy” or pre-abortion counseling, shall I phone you for moral support & direction? Exactly which Chuck Colson article shall you direct me toward? Frankly, Fr. Hans, you are the last person on the earth I would consider consulting because you are a classic ideologue: you talk, talk, and talk war games, but you know nothing about battling darkness. I suggest you order yourself a copy of our Father John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, just in time for his Lenten commemoration. You will not find a charlatan or creep in the whole volume.

So, Fr. Hans, I am presuming that, as has happened with so many similar threads previous, you have no intention of specifically addressing any of the substantive issues I have raised as to NARTH, their tactics, their lack of scientific credibility, their purposeful manipulation of the legitimate research system, or justifying your support of them & their practices. You, again, seem to be satisfied with concluding this same-old-song by dismissing me with platitude, distraction, and innuendo, rather than correcting me with data. Congratulations, again! You’ve had four long years to set me straight, but who’s counting? I look forward to our next encounter of truth and con.